Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 2 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions. — John Shaqi
Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 2 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy
Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 2 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.
Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy; Political science; Science
thus when the difference in the rates of a clock at the equator, and
nearer the poles, gave data for calculating the oblateness of the
earth, and accounting for the precession of the equinoxes. It was
thus—but it is needless to continue. Here, within our own limited
knowledge of its history, we have named ten additional cases in which
the single science of astronomy has owed its advance to sciences
coming _after_ it in M. Comte’s series. Not only its minor changes,
but its greatest revolutions have been thus determined. Kepler could
not have discovered his celebrated laws had it not been for Tycho
Brahe’s accurate observations; and it was only after some progress
in physical and chemical science that the improved instruments with
which those observations were made, became possible. The heliocentric
theory of the Solar System had to wait until the invention of the
telescope before it could be finally established. Nay, even the grand
discovery of all—the law of gravitation—depended for its proof upon
an operation of physical science, the measurement of a degree on the
Earth’s surface. So completely, indeed, did it thus depend, that Newton
_had actually abandoned his hypothesis_ because the {27} length of
a degree, as then stated, brought out wrong results; and it was only
after Picart’s more exact measurement was published, that he returned
to his calculations and proved his great generalization. Now this
constant intercommunion which, for brevity’s sake, we have illustrated
in the case of one science only, has been taking place with all the
sciences. Throughout the whole course of their evolution there has been
a continuous _consensus_ of the sciences—a _consensus_ exhibiting a
general correspondence with the _consensus_ of the faculties in each
phase of mental development; the one being an objective registry of the
subjective state of the other.
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